David Braun took over at Northwestern in the aftermath of hazing allegations that put then-head coach Pat Fitzgerald at the center (which turned out to be false), has led the team through a temporary stadium setup while renovations took place to the new Ryan Field, lured Chip Kelly to Evanston as the team's new offensive coordinator this offseason and added some big additions from the portal, and now he's set to earn a new deal with the school.
Pete Thamel of ESPN reports that the Wildcats and Braun have agreed to a new contract running through the 2031 season.
The school has also now announced the news.
The new deal adds three years to a deal that had been set to expire after 2028 and delivering a significant salary increase.
Braun's path to this point is unlike almost anyone else's in the Big Ten. He came to Northwestern in January 2023 as Pat Fitzgerald's defensive coordinator, an FCS lifer with no Power Four coaching experience on his resume. Before Evanston, he spent four seasons (2019-2022) as the defensive coordinator and safeties coach at North Dakota State, one of the most dominant programs in the FCS. His stops before that ran through Northern Iowa, UC Davis, Winona State, and Culver-Stockton, all on the defensive side.
Then the hazing scandal hit that Evanston that summer, Fitzgerald was fired, and Braun was handed the interim tag with the season bearing down on him.
He turned it into one of the best stories in college football. Northwestern went 8-5, the most wins for a first-year Northwestern coach since 1903, and closed it out with a Las Vegas Bowl win. Braun was named Big Ten Coach of the Year and took home the Paul "Bear" Bryant Newcomer Coach of the Year Award. The interim label came off in November of that year.
The 2025 season gave the school every reason to keep building around him. Northwestern finished 7-6 and 4-5 in the Big Ten, then hammered Central Michigan 34-7 in the GameAbove Sports Bowl at Ford Field. The Wildcats pulled that winning season out while playing most of their home schedule at a temporary lakeside facility as Ryan Field goes through its renovation, with a couple of dates mixed in at Wrigley Field.
Two winning seasons and two bowl wins in three years, all while the program was operating out of a construction zone. That is a résumé an athletic department should protect.
The new deal locks Braun in through 2031 and, per Thamel, comes with the kind of raise that signals Northwestern sees him as the long-term answer.
For a program that was picking up the pieces three years ago, that is about as clean an outcome as anyone in Evanston could have drawn up.
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